@Photo by Michelle Faye – © 2022, FX Networks.
Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones have been cast in Voyagers, a biopic about celebrated astronomer Carl Sagan. The narrative movie will tell the real-life love story between the late planetary scientist and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, Ann Druyan, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Oscar winning writer-director-producer Sebastián Lelio is set to helm Voyagers, which will be his next project. Ben Browning is producing the project for FilmNation Entertainment, alongside Druyan and Lynda Obst.
FilmNation will begin pitching global sales of the upcoming feature at the Cannes Film Market later this month.
Voyagers is set in 1977 as NASA is preparing to launch humanity’s first interstellar probes, the titular Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions. A team, led by Sagan, sets out to create a message to accompany them: the Golden Record, a group of images and sounds meant to express the essence of humanity. The Golden Record will also act as a first-contact greeting for any galactic lifeform the probes might reach.
But what starts out as a race-against-the-clock mission becomes an epic, unexpected love story between Sagan and his collaborator Druyan.
Lelio and Jessica Goldberg co-penned the screenplay for the biopic. The script is based on interviews with Druyan, who’s also known for co-scribing the 1980 PBS series, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, and others who worked on the Golden Record project.
“As a nine-year-old boy growing up during Chile’s dictatorship, Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s TV series Cosmos had a profound impact on me, igniting my fascination with life’s biggest questions and mysteries,” Lelio said in a statement. “It is a dream to make a movie about the Golden Record and, within it, the inspiring love story between Carl and Ann. I’m thrilled that Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar-Jones will be at the center of this epic romance set against the infinite backdrop of space and time.”
Druyan also commented on the movie, saying: “Imagine falling madly, truly in love with one of the greatest humans who ever lived, while creating a complex message about what it is to be alive, a golden record affixed to the first interstellar spacecraft launched by our species, bound to sail the Milky Way galaxy long after Earth ceases to exist. It takes a movie to bring that mythic experience, that cosmic love story to vivid life.”
Garfield and Edgar-Jones previously co-starred together in the FX limited series, Under the Banner of Heaven. The television project, which premiered last year, garnered the actor his first Emmy Award nomination and the actress her second Golden Globe Award nomination.
Garfield is also known for being nominated for two Best Actor Academy Awards, for Tick, Tick… Boom! (2022) and Hacksaw Ridge (2017). The Golden Globe and Tony Award-winning actor is currently in production in the UK on helmer John Crowley’s upcoming romantic film, We Life in Time. Garfield will appear on screen alongside Florence Pugh.
Edgar-Jones had her breakout role in Hulu’s 2020 romantic psychological drama limited series, Normal People, which is based on Sally Rooney’s 2018 best-selling novel. The actress garnered further fame in her breakout leading role on the big screen in last summer’s box office hit mystery thriller movie, Where the Crawdads Sing.
Lelio most recently co-wrote and directed last winter’s period psychological drama, The Wonder, starring Pugh, which House Productions and Element Pictures produced for Netflix. It was nominated for Outstanding British Film of the Year at last year’s BAFTA.